The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

Facebook hits 600 million users, executive says

Goldman Sachs waved a document in front of prospective, drool-splattered investors touting that Facebook had more than 600 million active monthly users.

Now Facebook executive Dan Rose has confirmed as much in an interview at the Digital-Life-Design Conference in Munich, Germany.

Facebook officially trumpeted that the site had crossed the half-billion mark in July. The Palo Alto company hasn't updated its official stats since. That has led to widespread speculation about just how popular the world's most popular social networking site has become.

In fact, it's quite likely that Facebook has racked up far more than 600-million users. But expect Facebook to be a lot stingier with the stats as it winds up for what could be the Internet's biggest IPO yet in 2012.